So I saw someone mention having a giant octopus or something show up, attack, then be viciously murdered by the captain to show how strong he is. They suggested that the pics fight it a bit first, then 2 rounds in Captain kills it. A giant octopus is a cr8. Would the pcs get full/half/any xp from such an encounter?
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So I saw someone mention having a giant octopus or something show up, attack, then be viciously murdered by the captain to show how strong he is. They suggested that the pics fight it a bit first, then 2 rounds in Captain kills it. A giant octopus is a cr8. Would the pcs get full/half/any xp from such an encounter?
I would suggest giving the PCs very little xp for this kind of encounter, if any. If you're feeling generous, maybe you could total up the damage the PCs inflicted on the octopus, estimate the CR of an average critter with that many hit points, and give them XPs appropriate to that CR. If you awarded the PCs half of the XP for a CR 8 enemy, I suspect they would level up faster than the module intends.
One way to handle this situation without the PCs feeling cheated would be to add Salvage Operation from Dungeon Magazine No. 123 as a side quest, and replace the final enemy with that CR 8 octopus. That way, even if the characters don't get any xp for the octopus, they still get xp for the other encounters in that adventure.
Personally, I'm only using xp during the sandbox portions of Skull & Shackles, when the modules assume that the PCs can do pretty much whatever they want until they hit a certain level or Infamy & Plunder threshold. During the heavily scripted portions of the AP, like all of Book 1, I'm just telling the players that they've leveled up when the module assumes they have. I discussed it with the players beforehand, and my group is fine with that system. Your results may vary.
During the sandbox portions of the AP, we're also using the slow xp track, because I'm adding plenty of side quests. There are a couple of great posts in this board listing appropriate side quests from Dungeon magazine and 3rd party publishers.
Leveling the PC's at the predetermined times has always worked well for us and has streamlined the game a good bit.
Eech, few things more than this would put me of an adventure
Could you elaborate? What puts you of the adventure, having an Npc steal a kill? Him being too tough to handle? Or the minimum xp encounter itself?